AT HOME WITH: Lowell Cunningham

Men in Black Come From His Galaxy

By RICK BRAGG

Published: July 3, 1997

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—
IT is hard to see the stars on Sunset Boulevard, all but impossible in Times Square. It is easy to regard them as cold and distant, as lifeless as neon.

But in the suburbs around Knoxville, in the uncluttered night sky of East Tennessee, they seem so bright that a person just has to wonder, just has to believe, at least a little, in the possibilities up there.

Lowell Cunningham grew up under a Tennessee sky. The writer whose comic book, ''Men in Black,'' inspired the new sci-fi movie, Mr. Cunningham does not spend nights on the hood of his car, searching those bright stars for spaceships and the surrounding deep woods for little green men or purple women.

But since he was a child, he has been enchanted by the possibility of life up there, of distant travelers who stumble onto earth.

''The last time I went out of my way to look at the sky, I was looking at a comet,'' said Mr. Cunningham, 38, who lives in a neat, green, middle-class suburb outside Knoxville. ''I didn't see a spaceship. But I do wonder if the stars have planets around them, civilizations on them.

''I can't deny the possibility even though I am by no means convinced of the reality.''

Or as the film that was based on his comic-book presumes, maybe there has already been contact, and an elite, supersecret organization shields us from the existence of alien visitors even as it blows to bits those who might do us harm.

''People do like the possibility,'' said Mr. Cunningham, a very normal looking man who lives in a normal town house -- though a little cluttered here and there with computer gear and the plastic models of monsters and action heroes he collects.

The notion of aliens living beside us, and occasionally threatening us, is so appealing that the movie was on the cover of ''Newsweek'' before it had sold a single ticket. To say it has changed Lowell Cunningham's life would be like saying Tommy Lee Jones, who stars with Will Smith in the movie, can act a little.

It has given him at least a modest wealth -- he will not say exactly how much money he got for his idea but concedes it was six figures -- and the idea has been spun off into an animated television series (coming in October) and, last month, a new 20,000-copy reprinting of his first ''Men in Black'' comic book, with drawings by Sandy Carruthers, this time from Marvel Comics.

Two film producers, Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, were sent the original comic book by an agent and contacted Mr. Cunningham in 1992. ''I haven't done a lick of honest work since then,'' he said. ''I haven't had to punch that time clock.''

It is, cliche or not, a dream come true for a normal guy who turned an underground urban legend -- the Men in Black -- into an obscure comic series that faded from print only to be reborn, in a huge way, in a $90 million Hollywood movie.

''I started working on it 10 years ago,'' said Mr. Cunningham, whose neat haircut and conservative glasses make him look more like an insurance salesman or a Methodist deacon than the mind behind a movie in which insectlike aliens inhabit the skins of human beings so they can move undetected in midtown Manhattan.

''Men in black have been talked about in U.F.O. circles for decades,'' he said. ''It excited me, it caught my attention.''

The comic books, featuring the guardians in dark suits and sunglasses who tracked down the dangerous aliens and blasted them into vile goop, did not even make him a living, in the beginning. Now, things will never be the same.

One recent afternoon, he stepped out of the back of a long black Lincoln sedan -- arranged for by the movie studio to take him from the airport to the home he shares with his fiancee, Dorothy Tompkins -- and was immediately greeted by a neighbor tending her yard. ''It's nice to be famous,'' the neighbor said, smiling.

Mr. Cunningham wandered over to smile and chat.

Later, inside a cozy living room where cats rub against guests' legs and a scale model of the monster from ''Alien'' lurks on a shelf, he confessed, ''I just got lucky.''

He was born the son of Ralph and Ruby Cunningham. His father, the son of farmers, was an accountant. His mother was an office worker for the State of Tennessee.

''My mother's middle name is Lou -- Ruby Lou,'' he said. ''You can't get much more Southern than that.''

Mr. Cunningham grew up in and around the slow and sleepy little city of Franklin, Tenn., and had a life that was not quite ''country'' and not quite ''town,'' as in Nashville, Memphis or Knoxville. ''I got the best of both worlds,'' he said.

Even as a boy, Mr. Cunningham was looking beyond Tennessee, and beyond his own planet. His television took him there, though sometimes it took him in black and white and shades of gray.

''When I was in the first grade, maybe the second or third, there was a sudden rush of science fiction,'' he said. He soaked up ''Land of the Giants'' and ''Star Trek'' and ''Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.''

They happened to come along ''in my formative years,'' he said. He loved ''The Man from U.N.C.L.E.'' -- whose heroes just happened to wear black suits and ties and white shirts -- and ''Kolchak, the Night Stalker,'' in which a reporter in a 1965 Mustang convertible chased vampires and aliens and other wretched creatures. Episode after episode, however, no one believed Kolchak when he warned them of impending doom.

After high school he enrolled at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he pursued and eventually caught a B.A. degree in philosophy. It was there, in an enclave of young artists and writers with their eyes turned to the stars, that he found a sort of second home.

''I've been here ever since,'' he said. ''I took some writing courses, joined a writing club. Several members have made professional sales since -- short stories, comics.''

But in the world of fiction, in any form, the idea is everything. His came after hearing tales -- tales that many people deeply, deeply believed -- of an organization of earthbound secret agents who prowled the country in long black cars and tracked down the dangerous aliens. The agents erased the memories of any innocents who might have encountered them by using a, well, a mind-erasing flash-type instrument. The Men in Black were protected from having their own memories erased by special sunglasses -- ''They don't call 'em Ray Ban for nothing,'' one hero explains in ''Men in Black'' No. 1, the limited-edition comic book published by Malibu comics in December 1989.

The premise of the whatsit (called a ''neuralizer'' in both the comic and the movie) explains why there has been no hard evidence -- or credible eyewitness accounts -- of alien abduction or encounters. The Men in Black erased the evidence, even as they destroyed, with space-age weapons confiscated from the aliens themselves, the visitors.

''A friend of mine, Dennis Matheson, was interested'' in that folklore, he said. ''And I was taken with the whole idea of these powerful men who show up and keep the peace. I shaped the Men in Black to be active agents, out there responding to threats, cleaning them up if they've already occurred. They describe themselves as the thin black line between reality and chaos.''

He remembers standing on a street corner in Knoxville, at Clinch Street and 16th Avenue -- and seeing a long black car rumble by. He remembers thinking, ''That's the kind of car the men in black would drive.'' Then, he wrote it into the comic.

''It amazed me that someone else hadn't been bright enough to capitalize on this,'' he said. It was a time, in the late 1980's, when black-and-white comics were big. ''By the time it appeared, I had just turned 30,'' he said.

After six issues, ''it went out of print. The black-and-white boom had become a bust,'' he said. ''I thought that might be the end of it.''

To pay his bills, he worked as a security guard at a blue jean factory. He worked in a public library. He sold baseball cards. To help his writing, he took a typing class at Pellissippi Community College.

He is a long way from typing class at Pellissippi.

''It was mostly women, planning for some sort of typing job,'' he said. ''Part of the course was presenting yourself, so they brought in a color consultant and they were draping scarves on my shoulders to see if I looked better in pink or lavender.

''When it was all done, the consultant said: 'There is one color you must never wear. You should never wear black.' ''

When Hollywood discovered ''Men in Black,'' Mr. Cunningham was able, with the money he received, to continue writing, creating. But he says his life did not change that much.

While there is a promise of riches, from the spinoff projects and from the movie itself, ''I don't like spending money I don't have,'' he said. ''It was a six-figure sum. In the low six figures. I've been living off it for five years.'' So, he is not shopping for mansions just yet.

The movie purchase was both a great joy and cause for great concern. The comic book, while it has humor in it, is not intended to be a comedy, but that is what the moviemakers decided to do with the movie.

''I was concerned it would be a farce,'' said Mr. Cunningham, who had no say over the script, which was written by Ed Solomon.

But what it is, both critics and Mr. Cunningham agree, is hip, clever and appealing. ''It doesn't hurt that when you meet most of the aliens, you like them,'' he said.

He has spent the last few months on publicity. ''My first trip to L.A., I stayed in the Peninsula Hotel -- I felt a little like Jed Clampett,'' he said, joking.

He is pleased that the movie, which opened this week, seems to be a hit. Pleased when he hears a line from his comic books in the movie dialogue. He is even a little pleased with his brief appearance on screen as a worker at the Men in Black headquarters.

But mostly, he is pleased that his idea, born in the stars, nurtured by black-and-white television and made bigger than life by Hollywood, is still alive.

''It's escapism,'' he said of his comic book and now the movie, in which a person can ogle an alien and never even leave Tennessee.

Photos: Lowell Cunningham, successful earthling. (Wade Payne for The New York Times)(pg. C1); Lowell Cunningham, at home in a Knoxville suburb. ''Everybody has one big idea in their lives,'' he said. His was to write the comic book ''Men in Black,'' later discovered by Hollywood. (Wade Payne for The New York Times); Sunglasses protect the Men in Black from mind-erasing instruments. ''They don't call 'em Ray Ban for nothing,'' one hero says in the comic book that inspired the film. (Sandy Carruthers) (pg. C8)